Can I hold a flight for my customer overnight without paying, so they have time to decide?

Sometimes yes, but not always, and it depends on the airline and the fare rather than on us. Where an airline allows a booking to be held before the ticket is issued, our flight booking API gives you back the deadline by which payment and ticketing must be done, and you can save the booking in that pending state while your customer thinks about it. Where the airline does not allow a hold, the only way to protect the seat and the fare is to issue the ticket there and then.

As a rough guide, full service airlines are more likely to let you hold a seat on certain fare types, while low cost airlines almost always sell on an instant purchase basis, so there is nothing to hold at all. Even on airlines that normally allow it, the cheapest promotional fares are often excluded. Because of that we cannot promise a hold on any particular search result, and you should treat it as something you check on each booking rather than something you can count on.

It is also important to know what happens if the deadline passes. The airline simply cancels the held booking, usually without telling anyone, and the seat and the fare go back into the market. If your customer comes back to you after that, you have to search again and the price may well have moved. So a hold buys you time, it does not lock in the fare forever.

When you book, look at the ticketing deadline that comes back with the booking and pass that date and time on to your customer in writing, and if you are unsure which of your connected airlines support holds, ask our support team to go through it with you.